1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to universally adjustable mountings for use with portable appliances and the like and more particularly to a portable electric fan having a universally adjustable mounting.
2. DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART
Prior to this invention, small portable appliances, such as fans, could not be successfully provided with a universally adjustable mounting that would compensate for the forces and torques produced by the action of the appliances. It was a common happenstance that a prior art portable fan having a universally adjustable mounting wold be positioned by a user only to move from the selected position once the fan was activated due to the forces and torques produced by the fan motor and blades. A user then would have to repeatedly readjust the universal mounting to reposition the fan unit while the universal mountings are old in the art, they rely mostly on compressive frictional forces or flexible stems for positional flexibility and have failed to overcome the problem discussed above.
The present invention provides an arrangement of spring biased ball bearings, a corresponding plurality of holes, and both compressive frictional and clamping means to solve the positioning problem noted previously.
The working interaction of the spring biased ball bearings and corresponding plurality of holes provides for a discrete number of positional possibilities for the mounting. In the present invention a force or torque greater than that produced by the associated appliance is required to move from one discrete position to another. Yet, this arrangement permits a user to manually exert sufficient force to select any one of the discrete positional possibilities that satisfies the user's demands.
When the discrete positional nature of the mounting is combined with the compressive frictional and clamping means of the invention, a universally adjustable mounting for use with portable appliances is provided overcoming the inadequacies of existing prior art universally adjustable mountings.